On Hungry Bookshelves and Ring-Tailed Lemurs

 

On Hungry Bookshelves and Ring-Tailed Lemurs

 

        What if bookshelves actually wanted to eat the books? We classify things as “alive and conscious”, or not, based on our understanding of subjects that we came up with. They’re not incorrect, of course – we have mountains of evidence for why we consider a ring-tailed lemur to be alive and thinking, but not a picture of one sunbathing (we really ought to give them the credit for starting that trend). Ring-tailed lemurs display the signs of life and consciousness: they react to external stimuli, seek nutrition, respirate, and reproduce. Pictures of said lemurs, evidently, do not. Hence, the former is considered living, and the latter is not. But we are limited by the human experience…

          Imagine, if you will, that our understanding of Life is merely that – our understanding. What if “non-living” things were, from their point of view, living, and they considered us to be the non-living ones. This goes against all of science, obviously. I should mention: I am not questioning the validity of science! Science provides us with an increasingly accurate framework for how things in our universe operate. Science should not be ignored. I’m merely proposing that our models and descriptions of Things, albeit accurate, are arbitrary. Maybe science is correct about the universe from our perspective, but not from the perspective of bookshelves. Just the phrase, “From the perspective of bookshelves,” doesn’t make sense because to us they cannot have perspectives. But I want to believe that they can, and that they think we cannot have perspectives! Keep in mind that these are the musings of a “living” being that is certainly not a scientist, and in all possibility, could be proven wrong. Yet, I want to believe.

          The point of this strange soliloquy? To ponder the ramifications of my initial question, of course.

          Let us commence:

Any “living” organism requires sustenance. What would hungry bookshelves yearn for? You guessed it: dumplings! No, of course not, they’d want books. You might be wondering, “If bookshelves ate books, why don’t we ever see them being digested?” A valid question, and one that I suspect has a tragic answer…

It takes about six to eight hours for food to pass through our stomachs and small intestines. Books, I’d imagine, take a lot longer to digest. Having observed the degradation of books placed in various settings, it seems that it would take bookshelves at least a couple hundred years to weather and absorb them. But are they provided the luxury of our patience to do so? No! We display no hesitation in interrupting their meals and snatching books off their shelves. And therein lies the tragedy.

Take a ring-tailed lemur (in the hypothetical sense, I discourage actual thievery of primates). If we were to see one eating, it is unlikely that we’d interrupt it. This appears to be for three main reasons:

1)    Lemurs digest food much quicker than bookshelves, and so our patience remains untested.

2)    We don’t usually seek what lemurs feast on (bugs, bark, leaves, etc.), with the exception of seasonal fruits. Books, on the other hand, fail to escape the clutches of our incessant wanting.

3)    Ring-tailed lemurs bask not only in the sun, but also in the glory of Hollywood representation. People often get swept away at the allure of having witnessed what they mistake to be King Julian before their eyes, whereas few give a second thought to bookshelves. As such, most tread carefully around a feasting ring-tailed lemur, but give no such consideration to a wild bookshelf.

So, what are we to make of all this? Unfortunately, I cannot provide you with the answers, nor would I have been able to dictate your actions if I could. Therefore, I leave you with this. The next time you meander through a library or bookstore and find that sought after manuscript, pause for a moment, and spare some thought to the poor bookshelf you might be robbing in that moment. Pay your respects before grabbing that book.

Treat bookshelves like you would ring-tailed lemurs, and the world will be better for it.